U.S. Homeland as a Battleground? Goodbye Civil Rights…

Shocking that this comes from Fox Business News, but it’s incredibly important to be aware of how our Civil Rights are being infringed on…

And Keith Olbermann weighs in…

Theodore Roosevelt on the Plutocracy:

“The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign — that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole — some effective power of supervision over their corporate use.  In order to insure a healthy social and industrial life, every big corporation should be held responsible by, and accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its conduct.”

 ~ President Theodore Roosevelt

And how about this?

“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heal.  Corporations, which should be carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

~ President Grover Cleveland

I’ve grabbed these quotations from a fabulous book by Thom Hartmann: What Would Jefferson Do?

May 22: We’re Still Here… So… Here’s More on SOJO:

I mean, my last post was… I guess a little… premature.  I HOPED… but… ahem.

Anyway.

Here’s an excerpt from what truly has been the best response I’ve read so far, from Jim Naughton, at The Guardian (UK):

“In the flurry of commentary that followed Sojourners’ rejection of the anodyne advertisement, Wallis’s allies and defenders have argued that accepting the ad would have jeopardised the coalition that Wallis has built. It is not clear that this is true…

…

At this potentially historic moment, the religious left cannot afford to speak through a man whose position on the issue in question places him to the right of Dick Cheney. It is obvious that Wallis in not the right leader for this particular parade; what is less evident is whether he plans to step aside or block the road.”

Click here for the full article. It really is well written, cogent and – yes – provocative.

Nadia Bolz-Weber: On Sojourners’ LGBTQ Fiasco…

I was surprised, at first, to read Nadia Bolz-Weber’s response to the Sojourners fiasco, given that she pastors a church known for queer-inclusivity.  When I heard she was trending toward a defense of Sojourners, I was ready to denounce, (surprised?) but like Brian McLaren’s response, hers is pastoral, and carries hope that forward motion is worthwhile, even if it is not in the fullness of what we pray for.  Does that satisfy me?  I can’t say that it does, but neither am I ready to decry her individually.  I have mixed feeling about her conclusions, just as I have mixed feelings about Brian’s, because both analyses carry with them an implied prioritization of one marginalized group over another.  This is deeply problematic.  But I’m not ready to rant against what she says here, because it is thoughtful, compassionate and well-said…

My name is on the Sojourners God’s Politics Blog and I serve a church that is self-described and indeed is “queer inclusive”.  Some of my progressive Christian friends and colleagues are calling for a boycott of Sojourners until they make a bold stand for the full inclusion of our GLBTQ brothers and sister in the church. I respect this.  I too want to take the strong stand for those who are always asked to eat last and least at the table or who are prevented from coming to it in the first place. The change needed in and indeed being experienced by the church right now in terms of full inclusion calls for bold action by those who are willing to take a stand.

But as I thought about what to say or do in response to Sojourners I felt confronted by a terrible ambiguity.  The ambiguity is this: Sojourners has, in my assessment, done more than any other organization to call Evangelical Christians to the reality that a central part of following Jesus is a concern for the poor, a truth largely absent from much of American Evangelicalism.  They have a platform to speak about social justice to those who otherwise may not have ears to hear and this is critical.  While mainline Protestantism is on a clear trajectory toward full inclusion (shout out to the PCUSA here) our free-church Evangelical brothers and sisters are by-in-large not there yet.  By taking a stance on GLBTQ issues Sojourners may lose their ability to be a voice for the poor in the more conservative areas of the church.

Are the poor more important than GLBTQ folks?  Is it ok to throw the rights of one group under the bus so that another group’s rights might be upheld? I wish there were really clear back and white answers here but the fact is that we live in a much more ambiguous world than that.  As a Lutheran I confess to living in the tension of being simultaneously sinner and saint and living in a world filed with the paradox of such. So here’s my response: I confess the ways in which I have favored the rights of one group over another.  I confess the ways in which I long for black and white answers to questions that elude them.  I confess the fact that by staying in relationship with Sojourners I may be hurting my GLBTQ brothers and sisters.  I confess that I may very well be wrong about all of it.

Full Post

But a commenter responded to Nadia’s post: “What if SoJo had done the same to an African American group? Or, a woman’s group? Would you feel so conflicted?” And that brought the whole thing back to much clearer terms for me.  Would we tolerate racism for the sake of the poor?  I think not (although I think sexism would be – and is – tolerated for all sorts of political expediencies).  So is this tap dancing really okay?

I don’t like it, it’s not “good enough,” but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t nodding my head in agreement through Nadia’s entire post… I hear her.  Which makes all this so confounding.

What do you think?

Brian McLaren: On Sojourners LGBTQ Controversy…

In case you missed it, here’s Brian McLaren’s response to the LGBTQ/Sojourners drama.

McLaren hits the nail on the head in identifying the tension between my own progressive bridge-building friends, my progressive take-no-prisoner friends, and maybe my self: who reacts at that gut level to how issues affect my friends.  There are consequences for each and every stance, however.

He writes:

If Sojourners decides to lead on LGBTQ issues, someone else will have to arise to lead a broad coalition on poverty issues because Sojourners will be — as things stand — excluded from the table. Conversely, if Sojourners decides to lead a broad poverty-related coalition, others will need to lead on LGBTQ issues.

And that’s where I understand the frustration of those who are frustrated with Sojourners. They wish Sojourners would lead in this issue too. Frankly, so do I when I forget how hard it is to build coalitions, and when I forget that taking bold stands is only one important part of the complex process of social change.

If I were to boil down messy contemporary reality to an equation, here’s what it would be:

• You can’t lead a coalition of progressive Christians without being an outspoken leader on LGBTQ issues.
• You can’t lead a coalition that includes mainstream evangelical and conservative Catholic Christians if you are an outspoken leader on LGBTQ issues.

Politically, and perhaps pastorally, I get this.  I really do.  But when McLaren says Sojourners is focused “primarily around the issue of poverty reduction,” he’s conceding that a priority has been made: poverty over (in this case) oppression of the sexually marginalized.  I don’t think this is hyperbole.

Yet McLaren’s letter here also answers my own lament, recognizing:

I wouldn’t have moved from “conventional” to “accepting-but-not-affirming” to “internally-conflicted” to “coalition-building” to “being an ally/advocate” if it weren’t for a lot of this creative tension. And I’m still in process — unfinished, phasic — because my tensions are not resolved.

And I would be blind, hypocritical and intolerable to pretend my process has been any different.  If the only religious and social institutions around offered black-and-white, polar approaches to sexuality, I would have never left my bunker.  There must be safe places for people to test the waters, to stretch without jumping all the way in.  That’s just the reality of broken, imperfect humanity: we don’t all respond to truth with an immediate “AMEN.”  We whine and fuss and pout and stomp and shit all over the place… and then – MAYBE – we give a little ground.  And then – MAYBE – a little more… and then (God-willing) our eyes begin to open.

Moreover, I’ve actually said the same thing about my seminary, George Fox: as much as I find frustration with their conservative policy on sexuality, classrooms have often been (in my experience) challenging, healthy places to discuss these issues and to express divergent beliefs.  Most of the students at Fox would not enroll if the school was “open and affirming.”  As it is, they at least have to put up with me and a ragtag group of liberals providing some devil’s advocacy.  Hopefully, at our best, we allow the conservatives to do the same for us (and at our worst, neither party gives an inch, nobody listens, and there is no love and no grace).  The church needs commons: places to wrestle, where relationship is not broken for disagreement…

And yet… these are my friends being abused.  How do I tolerate that?  How do I reconcile when the majority oppresses the few?  In another response elsewhere, someone writes: “would you have so much grace – so much patience – if the issue were racism?”  I think not.  One of my best friends, who is queer, said to me, “I feel kind of thrown under the bus,” after reading McLaren’s response.  She said, “I get where he’s coming from, but…”  But when do LGBTQ people stop having to sit in the back seat?

McLaren’s letter here doesn’t make me want to start reading Sojourners again.  I certainly won’t donate money to them again.  But I get the tension.  I live in it.  I’m surrounded by folks – loving folks – who will only go so far.  I don’t like it, but I suppose there are plenty of things on which I will only go so far… Still, when I can see the very real faces of the friends these limitations – these boundaries impact directly, all of the theoretical compromises and “necessary measures” stop being theoretical, and I wonder how truly necessary they are.  I sound like my old Evangelical self, but: the Gospel is not about compromise.

Tomorrow I’ll post a similar response from Nadia Bolz-Weber.

I’d Rather Choose To Do the Most Good

Instead of obsessing over which is the “RIGHT” belief (hopeless, indeed, and an adventure in missing the point of life and religion and being human, I think) I think it’s better to choose the belief or praxis that does the most GOOD.

I first started listening to the Euro-synth duo Erasure in early middle school, and had no idea then that beginning in 1986, lead vocalist Andy Bell was one of the first openly gay music stars in the world.  Because of his openness with his sexuality, Erasure’s success with US record labels was severely hampered.  The studios still sold their records (they still took their money), but publicity was muted, and noteworthy Erasure music videos featured Andy tragically singing to women.  Gentrified for American sensibilities.

There are all sorts of ways that we take people’s money without affirming them.  We marginalize them as we profit from them.  We do it in our churches.  In our universities.  I used to attend a church whose denomination claimed to affirm female pastors, but whose large pastoral staff of eight full time ministers were all male, and whose board would not even consider female deacons.  I attend a seminary that, for all its virtues as a well-intentioned emerging Evangelical institution (and it’s been very good to me) does not affirm my queer sisters and brothers (even though at LEAST one has paid tuition and she sat in classes next to me – she doesn’t attend anymore. I miss you Adele).

What exactly is at stake?  Biblical coherence?  A literal six day creation?  Women’s subordination to men?  A premillenial rapture?  I mean, how is this gay thing the linchpin of our whole theological system?  How is it the one final holdout, as we peel away slavery and racism and drinking alcohol and working on Sundays (or Saturdays) and believing in evolution and doing away with biblical inerrancy (we did most of these, right?) and empowering women (we try to)?  Why is is this gay thing the one thing we just can’t stand for?  Why is it different?  Why this issue, when all the others have already fallen away?

Takes awhile for this song to get going, but it’s awfully beautiful.

Erasure
“Grace”

Fundie News Flash: Christians Don’t Sin! (So You Should Convert!)

Over the next couple of days I’ll recount all the joy, drama, ridiculousness (perhaps on my part as well?) and childlike fun of mature religious debate (did I just type that?) as enabled by the wonders of the FACEBOOK WALL!

…
or perhaps…

"WHO WILL SURVIVE IN AMERICA?!" Gil Scott-Heron/Kanye West

The new Kanye West album is pretty amazing musically, narcissism and misogyny aside: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

It’s pretty phenomenal where West has come artistically in the last 5 years; perhaps, directly related to how fall he seems to fall, personally.

There’s a track at the end of the album, featuring spoken word by American poet and activist Gil Scott-Heron:

Us living as we do upside down. 
And the new word to have is revolution. 
People don’t even want to hear the preacher spill or spiel because God’s whole card has been thoroughly piqued. 
And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey. 
The youngsters who were programmed to continue fucking up 
woke up one night digging Paul Revere and Nat Turner as the good guys. 
America stripped for bed and we had not all yet closed our eyes. 
The signs of Truth were tattooed across our open ended vagina. 
We learned to our amazement untold tale of scandal. 
Two long centuries buried in the musty vault, 
hosed down daily with a gagging perfume. 
America was a bastard the illegitimate daughter of the mother country 
whose legs were then spread around the world and a rapist known as freedom, 
FREE DOOM. 
Democracy, liberty, and justice were revolutionary code names 
that preceded the bubbling 
bubbling 
bubbling 
bubbling 
bubbling in the mother country’s crotch
What does Webster say about soul?
All I want is a good home and a wife
And a children and some food to feed them every night.
After all is said and done build a new route to China if they’ll have you.
Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America?
Who will survive in America? 

But Scott-Heron’s lyrics are edited in Kanye’s cut.  These are the full verses:

Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (Susan Griffin)

from:Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (Susan Griffin)

Prologue
He says that woman speaks with nature.  That she hears voices from under the earth. That wind blows in her ears and trees whisper to her. That the dead sing through her mouth and the cries of infants are clear to her. But for him this dialogue is over. He says he is not part of this world, that he was set on this world as a stranger. He sets himself apart from woman and nature. 

And so it is Goldilocks who goes to the home of the three bears, Little Red Riding Hood who converses with the world, Dorothy who befriends a lion, Snow White who talks to the birds, Cinderella with mice as her allies, the Mermaid who is half fish, Thumbelina courted by a mole. (And when we hear in the Navaho chant of the mountain that a grown man sits and smokes with bears and follows directions given to him by squirrels, we are surprised. We had thought only little girls spoke with animals.)

We are the bird’s eggs. Bird’s eggs, flowers, butterflies, rabbits, cows, sheep; we are caterpillars; we are leaves of ivy and sprigs of wallflower. We are women. We rise from the wave. We are gazelle and doe, elephant and whale, lilies and roses and peach, we are air, we are flame, we are oyster and pearl, we are girls. We are woman and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak.
But we hear.


His Power

He Tames What Is Wild


The Hunt

Is it by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation when beholding the milky way? (herman melville, Moby-Dick)

And at last she could bear the burden of herself no more. She was to be had for the taking. To be had for the taking. (d.h. lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover)



She has captured his heart. She has overcome him. He cannot tear his eyes away. He is burning with passion. He cannot live without her. He pursues her. She makes him pursue her. The faster she runs, the stronger his desire. He will overtake her. He will make her his own. He will have her. (The boy chases the doe and her yearling for nearly two hours. She keeps running despite her wounds. He pursues her thorough pastures, over fences, groves of trees, crossing the road, up hills, volleys of rifle shots sounding, until perhaps twenty bullets are embedded in her body.) She has no mercy. She has dressed to excite his desire. She has no scruples. She has painted herself for him. She makes supple movements to entice him. She is without a soul. Beneath her painted face is flesh, are bones. She reveals only part of herself to him. She is wild. She flees whenever he approaches. She is teasing him. (Finally, she is defeated and falls and he sees that half of her head has been blown off, that one leg is gone, her abdomen split from her tail to her head, and her organs hang outside her body. Then four men encircle the fawn and harvest her too.) He is an easy target, he says. He says he is pierced. Love has shot him through, he says. He is a familiar mark. Riddled. Stripped to the bone. He is conquered, he says. (The boys, fond of hunting hare, search in particular for pregnant females.) He is fighting for his life. He faces annihilation in her, he says. He is losing himself to her, he says. Now, he must conquer her wildness, he says, he must tame her before she drives him wild, he says. (Once catching their prey, they step on her back, breaking it, and they call this “dancing on the hare.”) Thus he goes on this knees to her. Thus he wins her over, he tells her he wants her. He makes her his own. He encloses her. He encircles her. He puts her under lock and key. He protects her. (Approaching the great mammals, the hunters make little sounds which they know will make the elephants form a defensive circle.) And once she is his, he prizes her delight. He feasts his eyes on her. He adorns her luxuriantly. He gives her ivory. He gives her perfume. (The older matriarchs stand to the outside of the circle to protect the calves and younger mothers.) He covers her with the skins of mink, beaver, muskrat, seal, raccoon, otter, ermine, fox, the feathers of ostrich, osprey, egret, ibis. (The hunters then encircle that circle and fire first into the bodies of the matriarchs. When these older elephants fall, the younger panic, yet unwilling to leave the bodies of their dead mothers, they make easy targets.) And thus he makes her soft. He makes her calm. He makes her grateful to him. He has tamed her, he says. She is content to be his, he says. (In the winter, if a single wolf has leaped over the walls of the city and terrorized the streets, the hunters go out in a band to rid the forest of the whole pack.) Her voice is now soothing to him. Her eyes no longer blaze, but look on him serenely. When he calls to her, she gives herself to him. Her ferocity lies under him. (The body of the great whale is strapped with explosives.) Now nothing of the old beast remains in her. (Eastern Bison, extinct 1825; Spectacled Cormorant, extinct 1852; Cape Lion, extinct 1865; Bonin Night Heron, extinct 1889; Barbary Lion, extinct 1922; Great Auk, extinct 1944.) And he can trust her wholly with himself. So he is blazing when he enters her, and she is consumed. (Florida Key Deer, vanishing; Wild Indian Buffalo, vanishing; Great Sable Antelope, vanishing.) Because she is his, she offers no resistance. She is a place of rest for him. A place of his making. And when his flesh begins to yield and his skin melts into her, he becomes soft, and his is without fear; he does not lose himself; though something in him gives way, he is not lost in her, because she is his now: he has captured her.

The Lion In The Den Of The Prophets

She swaggers in. They are terrifying in their white hairlessness. She waits. She watches. She does not move. She is measuring their moves. And they are measuring her. Cautiously one takes a bit of her fur. He cuts it free from her. He examines it. Another numbers her feet, her teeth, the length and width of her body. She yawns. They announce she is alive. They wonder what she will do if they enclose her in the room with them. One of them shuts the door. She backs her way toward the closed doorway and then roars. “Be still,” the men say. She continues to roar. “Why does she roar?” they ask. The roaring must be inside her, they conclude. They decide they must see the roaring inside her. They approach her in a group, six at her two front legs and six at her two back legs. They are trying to put her to sleep. She swings at one of the men. His own blood runs over him. “Why did she do that?” the men question. She has no soul, they conclude, she does not know right from wrong. “Be still,” they shout at her. “Be humble, trust us,” they demand. “We have souls,” they proclaim, “we know what is right,” they approach her with their medicine, “for you.” She does not understand this language. She devours them.

Argument on Identity & with a Ugandan Missionary

I asked my friend Aaron for permission to re-post what he wrote in his facebook bio.  It’s his recounting of an argument he had with a Ugandan missionary, concerning “homosexuality” (I know this is not an ideal word to use).  I think his response to the missionary reveal a really beautiful spirit that I’d like to share with you.

Excerpts from an Argument with a Ugandan Christian Missionary

Aaron said:

This isn’t only about sex. People like me have been written out of the history of the church. Remnants of Eunuchs scattered about the pages and ridiculed by modern thought. We do not know God through the Bible and through Church. We know God through our heart. As I know myself through the heart.

The books will burn, the churches will crumble. America and Uganda will fall into the sea. But my unsatisfied heart will fly from me at death to the place it chooses and will be contented in freedom.

I love you Kitiibwa. You are strong and handsome too. I am not trying to convince you. I am telling you how things are seen through these eyes. And how my heart is in sorrow and unsatisfied. Not that I do not love properly but because I was loved improperly by all but a few and the Mystery that is Creator.Until my people are understood instead of condemned, we will never know our wholeness as a beautiful creation. One and All.

I think Aaron could give the rest of us a few lessons on gracious dialogue.  “I love you Kitiibwa.  You are strong and handsome too.  I am not trying to convince you.  I am telling you how things are seen through these eyes…”

Thanks Aaron.  I really was inspired when I read this over the weekend.
Peter

No book that is used to kill will tell me better than what my heart knows. God lives there.